


flatline

by mnemememory



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, but be careful, i don't think it's that bad, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 01:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15546201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: It’s like clockwork – like Nott’s crossbow, like the autonomation they had hacked to pieces to long ago (how long ago?). Spinning gears and so many blades.(or; fjord and jester and yasha, alone in a house of monsters)





	flatline

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**flatline**

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...

Hollow stillness bleaches the air, cut with the occasional burst of hysterical screaming.

It’s late, though – Fjord assumes that it is late – and things have died down to a blessed monotone. He leans against the bars of his cage and tries to ignore the painful stoop of the ceiling, the awkward slope that his shoulders have been forced into. Fjord stretches out as best he is able and makes himself comfortable amidst blisters and bruises and blood.

His eyes track lazily across the room; there’s a glow just beyond the bend, a forge of some kind. Fjord’s chest aches with sympathetic pain as he stares into the dim light, knots of bloody tissue stretching in time with his breathing. The room is a suffocation of silence and heat.

Tearing his eyes away from the impossibly distant hallway, Fjord lets himself glance off to the side. There’s a bit of a routine to it, now; a pattern. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been here, but there are blank periods in his head that would have been panic-inducing if the inside of his skull hadn’t hurt so much.

Jester looks so small.

Pins and needles scuttle down Fjord’s skin as he tries to make out the narrow lines of her back, but it’s hard to see past their separate bars. Their cages are close enough that, if he tried, he could probably scratch at the metal. Get her attention. He’d certainly tried that at first – when they hadn’t been watching.

(When he thought they hadn’t been watching).

The longer he stares, the more he can see. Jester is curled up towards the wall, glaring mutinously out at the hallway light. Her tail lies limp on the ground, the tip bent at an awkward angle outside the bars. It occasionally twitches, and she muffles the sounds that come out of her mouth by biting down on her wrist.

The echo of her scream revibrates in Fjord’s ears. He’s going to hear that sound for the rest of his life.

Jester clutches at her knees and shivers, blue skin a mess of – of things that Fjord doesn’t want to think about. It’s worse, in a way, that they had touched her. _Not Jester_ , he thought (thinks), over and over – _How could anyone hurt –?_

But they had. They had hurt her, again and again and again. They had hurt Fjord as well, but Fjord’s been expecting pain for as long as he can remember. Maybe not to this extreme, but it’s only one mental adjustment away from being frighteningly familiar. His mouth aches with the weight of his tusks as they try to grow themselves out, eagre to take advantage of the unexpected interruption to his grooming schedule.

The first time someone – he thinks it was a man – had dragged a hot length of iron down the centre of Fjord’s chest, he had been remarkable chatty. “You’re a nice one,” he had said, tapping the red-ripped end against Fjord’s collarbone in an almost amicable gesture. Fjord locks his jaw to muffle a scream. “Big and strong. Someone’ll be paying good money for you, once we’ve finished.”

Fjord hates this – he _hates_ this, that he had been caught off guard, that they had all been caught off guard, that they’re trapped here and swearing blood and trying not to die long enough to be sold for slaughter.

Fjord wants to talk to Jester. So, so desperately, Fjord wants to talk to Jester. To say, _It’s going to be okay_. To say, _We’re going to get out of this._ To say, _They’re going to come after us. They will. It’s okay_.

He can’t. He can’t, because they will hear him. He can’t, because they will take the words and twist them, barb them, shove them back inside and leave them to cut. Already, with a sting of vomit curling in the back of his throat, he can just imagine how badly they could hurt the both of them – the three of them – if he broke his silence.

Jester glances over at him, and her face is. Her face is. Fjord wants to look away, but he won’t (he can’t), won’t let her see how bad it is reflected in his expression.

“It will be okay,” she says, because Jester has always been a braver person than Fjord will ever be. “We are going to get out of this. Do not worry, Fjord. Everything will be okay.”

…

…

Yasha is in a different room.

Fjord only sees her when she’s being dragged towards the forge – it’s happened a few times, now, and he’s learning to judge the time between as a kind of morbid hour-count. She’s always spitting and hissing and swearing, breaking bones and splitting lips and coming out all the worse for it. Fjord wants to tell her to stop, because if they’re going to get out of here (they’re going to get out of here), they have to be smart about this.

But it’s hard not to envy her in her unbridled fury. Fjord looks at the dim glow and flinches away, mind whirling with desperate plans. Yasha looks forward and tries to rip it apart with her teeth.

They’re dragging her forward now, bare feet digging bloody grooves into the stone floorwork, arms bound to tightly behind her back it’s a wonder they’re still attached. She’s been flayed raw, strips of skin hanging in ribbons off her arms, and Fjord can hardly recognise her shy, awkward smile in the cruel snap of her teeth. They’re going to muzzle her, soon.

Fjord feels sick.

Jester is on her feet and clutching at the bars in seconds, fingers clenched white as she stares at Yasha’s frenzied form. Yasha looks over to them for a heartbeat of a second, panic flashing in her mismatched eyes, before she’s pulled further on. After a few minutes of standing there on splintering toes, Jester lets herself collapse onto the bottom of the cage and sob angrily.

There’s no one else in the room. Hesitating, and hating himself for it, Fjord presses his palm through the bars and knocks on Jester’s cage. Once. Twice.

Jester looks up, and she tries to smile, and it’s the most awful thing that Fjord has ever seen.

…

…

It’s like clockwork – like Nott’s crossbow, like the autonomation they had hacked to pieces to long ago (how long ago?). Spinning gears and so many blades.

Yasha goes in and comes out. They come for Fjord next.

He’s waiting. And maybe he’s too tired to play it up, or maybe he’s finally lost it. (Or maybe he’s angry, as angry as Yasha, as angry as he’s ever been – because they’ve got him locked down, and he’s watching as people he cares about are being torn apart, and he’s so _useless_ ).

When they open the cages, he pushes out against the back of his cage and uses the momentum to force himself out. He slams his head up, into the underside of his captor’s jaw. She gives and shout and stumbles back, and Fjord locks his arm around one of the cage bars and uses it to leverage himself to his feet.

“Fjord!” Jester shouts, high and panicked. She jams her forearm through the bars and loses a good three layers of skin as she tries to grab the woman in a headlock. She misses, and their captor begins to yell for reinforcements. Fjord kicks her in the ribs, but his knee throbs something fierce, and he has to give up his momentary advantage to keep from collapsing prone onto the ground.

“Nice try,” the woman says, as the rest of the group swarms.

…

…

“You know,” Jester says. “I don’t think I like this very much.

Don’t get me wrong! I am very glad I left. Or, you know, had to leave. But it was a lot of fun for _ages_ because even if you were the only person I could talk to, you’re _amazing_ so it doesn’t really matter that no one else can see you.

“But I…

“You can’t tell _anyone_ , but at the moment, I’m a little scared. I’m trying really hard not to be, but Fjord hasn’t woken up, and I haven’t seen Yasha, and. And. I know the others are coming. I _know_ it. They won’t leave us here.

“But these guys are, like, _super_ strong. Strong enough to take out both Fjord _and_ Yasha _and_ me, and we didn’t even get to fight back. And, to be honest, we’re probably the smartest ones here.

Well, aside from Nott. And Caleb! Maybe. But since he doesn’t really bathe much, he can’t be _that_ smart. Smart people takes baths! My Mama takes baths _all the time_ , and she’s the smartest person I know, and also the richest, so she’s probably right.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been drawing you anything interesting in my sketchbook. Is that why you haven’t been talking back? I left it behind at the campsite, but if you’re angry because I haven’t been drawing, when I get it back I’m going to draw you _so many pictures_. Seriously, so many.

“Just…

“Please don’t leave me alone here in the dark.”

…

…

Fjord wakes up slowly, to the blistering heartbeat of a headache.

There’s a loud noise coming from a distance away, but Fjord can’t seem to concentrate. Something cold and sticky is sealing his eyelids closed, and it takes a few minutes to muster up to muster up the energy to rub it away. He moves his arm, and –

Fjord wheezes and tries to keep as still as possible, pain ratchetting along his ribcage. He lets out a half-choked howl before collapsing boneless against the side of the cage, throat raw.

“Oh, good,” Jester says, voice coming from somewhere close to his ear. “You’re awake!”

Fjord groans, but doesn’t answer.

“I was getting a little bit worried,” Jester says. “You haven’t woken up for _ages_ , and something really big just started happening, and the walls keep shaking, and I think we’re going to be buried alive.”

Fjord forces his eyes open through a thick layer of bloody sludge; he tries to focus on Jester’s face, but all he can see is a blue smudge that keeps bobbing around, broken tail anxiously twitching.

“Good morning,” he croaks out, and wishes he hadn’t.

“Good morning, Fjord,” Jester says. “I think we need to get out of here _very soon_.”

“I think we already tried that,” Fjord says.

The entire right wall of their cell explodes.

Fjord and Jester jerk their heads around in time to see a blackened, cracked forge spill out hot coals onto the ground, creating a pathway of glowing embers. In the distance, they hear: “I’M SO GLAD WE FOUND THAT LAST STICK OF DYNAMITE!”

Jester laughs. Fjord clears his throat, closes his eyes, and shouts: “What took you so long?”

...

...

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so tired, you guys. 
> 
>  
> 
> Replies to comments will be up tomorrow.


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